Extracted Text

The following text was automatically extracted from the image on this page using optical character recognition software:

Book Reviews

denunciations of popular evangelists with crude tirades againstNegroes. He understood the journalistic trick that a sharp attackupon the status quo was a certain way to acquire readers. His cam-paign of vituperation culminated in attacks on Baylor Univer-sity, the chief Baptist institution of learning in Texas. Fuel wasadded to the flames by the seduction or rape of a foreign studentwho was a ward in the house of the president of Baylor. Althoughthe alleged seducer was neither a student nor a faculty memberof the university, Brann made the scandal the basis for an attackon the moral integrity of the university in particular and of theBaptists in general. This rubbing of salt in the wound gave hispaper wide circulation and hurt the reputation of a prized school.Brann was horsewhipped by an angry citizen, kidnapped andthrashed by Baylor students, and inspired the violent death ofseveral persons. The end of Brann and his Iconoclast came in apistol fight between him and a friend of Baylor that resulted inthe death of both men.Despite the interest of the subject, Mr. Carver's book is onlypartly satisfying. He uses printed sources only and does not ex-plain his failure to make revelations from private letters. He doesnot stick close to the subject of his biography; he interpolatesdocumentary evidence only indirectly relevant. Moreover, Branndoes not turn out to be the giant destroyer of cant the writerimagined he was during a South Carolina childhood. The Wacoeditor was no Voltaire or H. L. Mencken, no master of uniquelydestructive rhetoric. Supposedly the enemy of Victorianism, he isrevealed as a belated Victorian-a gallant gentleman of the oldschool as likely to uphold the moral proprieties as a provincialpreacher. After a furious attack on Baylor, he naively remarked,"I would deserve to be shot if I defamed the humblest girl withinits walls." FRANCIS B. SIMKINSLongwood CollegeBig D Is for Dallas. By James Howard. Austin (Privately printed,distributed by University Co-operative Society), 1957- Pp.170. Illustrations. $3.25.The author is an academic product of The University of Texasand the American Civilization program at Harvard University.Dr. Oscar Handlin, who supervised this dissertation, has indicated